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$Title{Rollin's Ancient History: History Of The Persians And Grecians
Section III.}
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$Author{Rollin, Charles}
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$Subject{alcibiades
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$Date{1731}
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Title:       Rollin's Ancient History: History Of The Persians And Grecians
Book:        Chapter VI.
Author:      Rollin, Charles
Date:        1731

Section III.

Alteration In The Government Of Athens.

Alcibiades Recalled, And Afterwards Appointed Generalissimo.

     Pisander, at his return to Athens, found the change he had proposed at
his setting out, much forwarded, to which he put the last hand soon after.  To
give a form to his new government, he caused ten commissioners, with absolute
power, to be appointed, who were, however, at a certain time, to give the
people an account of what they had done. At the expiration of that term, the
general assembly was summoned, wherein their first resolution was, that every
one should be admitted to make such proposals as he thought fit, without being
liable to any accusation of infringing the law, or consequential penalty.  It
was afterwards decreed, that a new council should be formed, with full power
to administer the public affairs, and to elect new magistrates. For this
purpose, five presidents were established, who nominated a hundred persons,
including themselves.  Each of these chose and associated three more at his
own pleasure, which made in all four hundred, in whom an absolute power was
lodged.  But to amuse the people, and to console them with a shadow of popular
government, while they instituted a real oligarchy, it was said that the four
hundred should call a council of five thousand citizens, to assist them when
they should judge it necessary.  The council and assemblies of the people were
held as usual; nothing was done, however, but by order of the four hundred.
The people of Athens were deprived in this manner of their liberty, which they
had enjoyed almost a hundred years, after having abolished the tyranny of the
Pisistratidae. ^612

[Footnote 612: Thucyd. l. viii. pp. 590-594.  Plut. in Alcib. p. 165.]

     This decree being passed without opposition, after the separation of the
assembly, the four hundred, armed with daggers, and attended by a hundred and
twenty young men, whom they made use of when any execution required it,
entered the senate, and compelled the senators to retire, after having paid
them the arrears due upon their appointments.  They elected new magistrates
out of their own body, observing the usual ceremonies upon such occasions.
They did not think proper to recall those who were banished, lest they should
authorize the return of Alcibiades, whose uncontrollable spirit they
apprehended, and who would soon have made himself master of the people.
Abusing their power in a tyrannical manner, some they put to death, others
they banished, confiscating their estates with impunity.  All who ventured to
oppose this change, or even to complain of it, were butchered upon false
pretexts; and those would have met with a bad reception, who demanded justice
of the murderers.  The four hundred, soon after their establishment, sent ten
deputies to Samos for the army's concurrence with it.

     All that had passed at Athens was already known there, and the news had
enraged the soldiers to the highest degree.  They deposed immediately several
of their chiefs, whom they suspected, and put others into their places, of
whom Thrasylus and Thrasybulus were the principal, and in highest credit.
Alcibiades was recalled, and chosen generalissimo by the whole army, which
desired to sail directly for Piraeus, to attack the tyrants.  But he opposed
it, representing that it was necessary he should first have an interview with
Tissaphernes, and that, as they had chosen him general, they might rely upon
him for the care of the war.  He set out immediately for Miletus.  His
principal design was to show himself to that governor, in all the power he had
been invested with, and to let him see that he was in a condition to do him
much good, or much harm.  The consequence of which was, that as he had kept
the Athenians in awe by Tissaphernes, he now awed Tissaphernes no less by the
Athenians; and we shall see in the sequel that this interview was not
unnecessary. ^613

[Footnote 613: Thucyd. l. viii. pp. 595-604.  Plut. in Alcib. p. 205. Diod. l.
xiii. p. 165.]

     Alcibiades, upon his return to Samos, found the army more inflamed than
at first.  The deputies of the four hundred arrived there during his absence,
and had endeavored in vain to justify, to the soldiery, the alteration made at
Athens.  Their discourses, which were often interrupted by tumultuous cries,
served only to exasperate them more, and they earnestly demanded to be led
against the tyrants directly. Alcibiades did not act on this occasion, as
everybody else would have done, in consequence of having been raised to so
high a dignity by the favor of the people; for he did not think himself
obliged to an absolute and implicit compliance with them in every thing,
though, from an exile and fugitive, they had made him general of so great a
fleet, and so numerous and formidable an army; but, as a statesman and great
politician, he believed it his duty to oppose the blind fury that hurried them
on into evident danger, and to prevent them from committing a fault, which
must have been attended with their utter ruin.  This wise steadiness preserved
the city of Athens.  For had they sailed thither at first, the enemy would
have made themselves masters of Ionia, the Hellespont, and all the islands,
without resistance; while the Athenians, by carrying the war into their own
city, would have exhausted their whole forces against one another.  He
prevented the deputies from being ill-treated, and dismissed them, saying,
that he did not object to the five thousand citizens having the supreme
authority in the republic, but it was necessary to depose the four hundred,
and to re-establish the senate.

     During this time, the Phoenician fleet, which the Lacedaemonians
impatiently expected, approached, and news came that it was arrived at
Aspendus, a city of Pamphylia.  Tissaphernes went to meet it; nobody being
able to divine the cause of that journey.  He had sent for that fleet at first
to flatter the Lacedaemonians with the hopes of a powerful aid, and to put a
stop to their progress, by making them wait its arrival.  It was believed that
his journey had the same motive; to prevent their doing any thing in his
absence, and that their soldiers and mariners might disband for want of pay.
However it was, he did not bring the fleet with him, from the view, no doubt,
of keeping the balance equal, which was the king of Persia's interest, and to
exhaust both parties by the length of the war.  For it had been very easy to
have put an end to it by the assistance of this additional fleet, as the
Lacedaemonians alone were already as strong at sea as the Athenians.  His
frivolous excuse, of its not being complete, for not bringing it with him,
sufficiently shows that he had other reasons for his conduct. ^614

[Footnote 614: Thucyd. l. viii. pp. 604-608.]

     The return of the deputies without success, who had been sent to Samos,
and the answer of Alcibiades, excited new troubles in the city, and gave a
mortal wound to the authority of the four hundred.  The tumult increased
exceedingly, when news was brought that the enemy, after having beaten the
fleet sent by the four hundred to the aid of Euboea, had made themselves
masters of the island.  Athens was in the greatest terror and consternation
upon this account.  For neither the defeat of Sicily, nor any other preceding
it, were so considerable as the loss of this island, from whence the city
received considerable supplies, and almost all its provisions.  If, in the
confusion in which Athens was at that time, between two factions, the
victorious fleet had fallen upon the port, as it might have done, the army of
Samos would have been indispensably obliged to have flown to the defence of
their country; and then the republic would have had only the city of Athens
remaining of all its dominions.  For the Hellespont, Ionia, and all the
islands, seeing themselves abandoned, would have been reduced to declare
themselves, and go over to the Peloponnesians.  But the enemy were not capable
of such great designs; and this was not the first time the Lacedaemonians had
been observed to have lost their advantages by the slowness and protraction
natural to them. ^615

[Footnote 615: Idem. pp. 607-614.  Plut. in Alcib. pp. 206-210.  Diod. pp.
171, 172, et 175-177, et 189-192.]

     Athens without delay deposed the four hundred, as authors of all the
troubles and divisions under which they groaned.  Alcibiades was recalled by
unanimous consent, and earnestly solicited to make all possible haste to the
assistance of the city.  But judging, that if he returned immediately to
Athens, he should owe his recall to the compassion and favor of the people, he
resolved to render his return glorious and triumphant, and to deserve it by
some considerable exploit.  For this purpose, leaving Samos with a small
number of ships, he cruised about the islands of Cos and Cnidos; and having
learned that Mindarus, the Spartan admiral, had sailed to the Hellespont with
his whole fleet, and that the Athenians were in pursuit of him, he steered
that way with the utmost diligence to support them, and arrived happily with
his eighteen vessels, at the time the fleets were engaged near Abydos in a
battle, which lasted till night, without any advantage on either side.  His
arrival gave the Spartans new courage at first, who believed him still their
friend, and dispirited the Athenians.  But Alcibiades, hanging out the
Athenian flag in the admiral's galley, fell upon the Lacedaemonians, who were
strongest, and were pursuing the Athenians, put them to flight, drove them
ashore, and, animated by his success, sunk their vessels, and made a great
slaughter of the soldiers, who had thrown themselves into the sea to save
themselves by swimming; though Pharnabazus spared no pains to assist them, and
had advanced at the head of his troops to the coast, to favor their flight,
and to save their ships.  The Athenians, after having taken thirty of their
galleys, and retaken those they had lost, erected a trophy. ^616

[Footnote 616: A. M. 3595.  Ant. J. C. 409.]

     Alcibiades, vain of his success, had the ambition to desire to appear
before Tissaphernes in this triumphant equipage, and to make him rich
presents, as well in his own, as in the name of the people of Athens.  He went
to him, therefore, with a magnificent retinue, worthy of the general of
Athens.  But he did not meet with the favorable reception he expected.  For
Tissaphernes, who knew he was accused by the Lacedaemonians, and feared that
the king would punish him at length for not having executed his orders found
Alcibiades presenting himself very opportunely, and caused him to be seized
and sent prisoner to Sardis; to shelter himself by that injustice against the
representations of the Lacedaemonians.

     Thirty days after, Alcibiades, having found means to get a horse, escaped
from his guards, and fled to Clazomene, where to revenge himself on
Tissaphernes, he gave out that he had him set at liberty. From Clazomene he
repaired to the Athenian fleet, where he was joined by Theramenes with twenty
ships from Macedonia, and by Thrasybulus with twenty more than Thasos.  He
sailed from thence to Parium in the Propontis.  All those ships, to the number
of eighty-six, being come thither, he left that place in the night, and
arrived the next morning at Proconnesus, a small isle near Cyzicum.  He heard
there, that Mindarus was at Cyzieum with Pharnabazus and his land army.  He
rested that whole day at Proconnesus.  On the morrow he harangued his
soldiers, and represented to them the necessity there was for attacking the
enemy by sea and land, and making themselves masters of Cyzicum;
demonstrating, at the same time, that without a complete and absolute victory,
they could have neither provisions nor money.  He had taken great care that
the enemy should not be apprised of his approach.  By good fortune for him, a
great storm of rain and thunder, followed by a thick gloom, helped him to
conceal his enterprise so successfully, that not only the enemy were prevented
from perceiving that he advanced, but the Athenians themselves, whom he had
caused to embark with precipitation, did not know that he had weighed anchor
and put to sea.

     When the gloom was dispersed, the Lacedaemonian fleet appeared,
exercising at some distance before the port.  Alcibiades, who apprehended that
the enemy, upon the sight of so great a number of ships, would make the
harbor, ordered the captains to keep back a little, and to follow him at a
good distance; and taking only forty vessels, he advanced towards the enemy,
to offer them battle.  The enemy, deceived by this stratagem, and despising
this small number, advanced against him, and began the fight.  But when they
saw the rest of the Athenian fleet come up, they immediately lost courage, and
fled. Alcibiades, with the twenty of his best ships, pursued them to the
shore, landed, and killed a great number of them in the flight. Mindarus and
Pharnabazus opposed his efforts in vain; the first, who fought with
astonishing valor, he killed, and put the other to flight.

     The Athenians, by this victory, which made them masters of the slain, the
arms, spoils, and whole fleet of the enemy, besides the taking of Cyzicum, not
only possessed themselves of the Hellespont, but drove the Spartans entirely
out of that sea.  Letters were intercepted in which the latter, with a
conciseness truly laconic, advised the ephori of the blow they had received,
in terms to this effect: "The flower of your army is cut off; Mindarus is
dead; the rest of the troops are dying with hunger; and we neither know what
to do, nor what will become of us."

     The news of this victory occasioned no less joy to the Athenians than
consternation to the Spartans.  They despatched ambassadors immediately, to
demand that an end should be put to the war, equally destructive to both
people, and that a peace should be concluded upon reasonable conditions, for
the re-establishment of their ancient concord and amity, the salutary effects
of which they had for many years experienced. ^617 The wisest and most
judicious of the citizens of Athens were unanimously of opinion, that it was
proper to take the advantage of so favorable a conjuncture for the concluding
of a treaty, which might put an end to all jealousies, appease all
animosities, and remove all distrusts.  But those who found their advantage in
the troubles of the state prevented the good effects of that disposition.
Cleophon, among others, the most reputed orator at that time, animated the
people from the tribunal of harangues, by a violent and seditious discourse,
insinuating, that their interest were betrayed by a secret intelligence with
the Lacedaemonians, which aimed at depriving them of all the advantages of the
important victory they had gained, and at making them lose for ever the
opportunity of being fully avenged for all the wrongs and misfortunes Sparta
had caused them to suffer. ^618

[Footnote 617: Diod. l. iii. pp. 177-179.]

[Footnote 618: Aesch. in Orat. de Fals. Legat.]

     This Cleophon was an inconsiderable fellow, a musical instrument maker.
It was reported also that he had been a slave, and had got himself
fraudulently enrolled in the register of the citizens.  He carried his
audacity and fury so far, as to threaten to plunge his dagger into the throat
of any one who should talk of peace.  The Athenians, puffed up with their
present prosperity, forgetting their past misfortunes, and promising
themselves all things from the valor and good fortune of Alcibiades, rejected
all proposals of accommodation, without reflecting, that there is nothing so
fluctuating and precarious as the success of war.  The ambassadors retired
without being able to effect any thing.  Such infatuation and irrational pride
are generally the forerunners of some great misfortune.

     Alcibiades knew well how to make use of the victory he had gained, and
presently after besieged Chalcedonia, which had revolted from the Athenians,
and received a Lacedaemonian garrison.  During this siege, he took another
town, called Selymbria.  Pharnabazus, terrified by the rapidity of his
conquests, made a treaty with the Athenians to this effect: "That Pharnabazus
should pay them a certain sum of money; that the Chalcedonians should return
to their obedience, depend upon the Athenians, and pay them tribute; and that
the Athenians should commit no hostilities in the province of Pharnabazus, who
engaged for the safe conduct of their ambassadors to the great king."
Byzantium and several other cities submitted to the Athenians.

     Alcibiades, who desired with the utmost passion to see his country again,
or rather to be seen by his country, after so many victories over their
enemies, set out for Athens.  The sides of his ships were covered with
bucklers and all sorts of spoils, in form of trophies; and causing a great
number of vessels to be towed after him by way of triumph, he displayed also
the ensigns and ornaments of those he had burned, which were more than the
others; the whole amounting to about two hundred ships.  It is said, that
reflecting on what had been done against him, upon approaching the fort, he
was struck with some terror, and was afraid to quit his vessel, till he saw
from the deck a great number of his friends and relations, who were come to
the shore to receive him, and earnestly entreated him to land. ^619

[Footnote 619: A. M. 3597.  Ant. J. C. 407.]

     The people came out of the city in a body to meet him, and at his
appearance set up incredible shouts of joy.  In the midst of an infinite
number of officers and soldiers, all eyes were fixed solely on him, whom they
considered as victory itself, descended from the skies; all around him
passionately caressing, blessing and crowning him, in emulation of each other.
Those who could not approach him were never tired with contemplating him at a
distance, while the old men showed him to their children.  They repeated with
the highest praises all the good actions he had done for his country; nor
could they refuse their admiration even to those he had done against it during
his banishment, of which they imputed the fault to themselves alone.  This
public joy was mingled with tears and regret, from the remembrance of past
misfortunes, which they could not avoid comparing with their present felicity.
We could not have failed," said they "of the conquest of Sicily; our other
hopes could never have proved abortive, if we had referred all our affairs and
forces to the disposal of Alcibiades alone.  In what a condition was Athens
when he took upon him our protection and defence!  We had not only almost
entirely lost our power at sea, but were scarcely possessed of the suburbs of
our city, and to add to our misfortunes, were torn in pieces by a horrid civil
war.  He, notwithstanding, has raised the republic from its ruins; and not
content with having reinstated it in the possession of the sovereignty of the
sea, has rendered it universally victorious by land; as if the fate of Athens
had been in his hands alone, either to ruin or preserve it, and victory was
annexed to his person, and obeyed his orders."

     This favorable reception of Alcibiades did not prevent his demanding an
assembly of the people, in order to his justification before them; well
knowing how necessary it was for his safety to be absolved in form.  He
appeared, therefore, and after having deplored his misfortunes, which he
imputed very little to the people, and entirely ascribed to his ill-fortune,
and some demon envious of his prosperity, he represented to them the designs
of the enemy, and exhorted them not to conceive any other than great hopes.
The Athenians, transported with hearing him speak, decreed him crowns of gold,
appointed him general by sea and land with unlimited power, restored him all
his fortunes, and ordered the Eumolpides and Ceryces ^620 to absolve him from
the curses they had pronounced against him by the order of the people; doing
their utmost to make him amends for the injury and shame of his banishment, by
the glory of his recall, and to efface the remembrance of the anathemas
themselves had decreed, by the vows and prayers which they made in his favor.
While all the Eumolpides and Ceryces were employed in revoking those
imprecations, Theodorus, the principal of them, had the courage to say, "But
for me, I have not cursed him, if he has done no evil to his country;"
insinuating by that bold expression, that the maledictions, being conditional,
could not fall upon the head of the innocent, nor be averted from the guilty.

[Footnote 620: The Eumolpides and Ceryces were two families at Athens who had
different functions in the mysteries of Ceres.  They took their names from
Eumolpus and Ceryx, the first who had exercised these offices.  Perhaps the
employment of the latter had some relation to that of a herald.]

     In the midst of this glory and brilliant prosperity of Alcibiades, the
majority of the people could not help being concerned, when they considered
the time of his return.  For it happened precisely upon the day when the
Athenians celebrated the feast in honor of Minerva, worshipped under the name
of Agraulis.  The priests took off all the ornaments from the statue of the
goddess to wash it, and afterwards covered it; and that day was accounted one
of the most ominous and unfortunate.  It was the twenty-fifth of the month
Thargelion, which answers to the second of July.  This circumstance displeased
that superstitious people, because it seemed to imply, that the goddess,
patroness, and protectress of Athens, did not receive Alcibiades agreeably,
and with a benign aspect, since she covered and concealed herself, as if she
would keep him off and remove him from her.

     All things having, however, succeeded according to his wish, and the
hundred ships he was to command being ready, he deferred his departure out of
a laudable ambition to celebrate the great mysteries; for from the time the
Lacedaemonians had fortified Decelia, and taken possession of all the ways
from Athens to Eleusina, the feast had not been solemnized in all its pomp,
and the procession had been obliged to go by sea. ^621 The particular
ceremonies of this solemnity may be seen in book x. chap. iii.

[Footnote 621: Plut. in Alcib. p. 210.]

     Alcibiades believed it would be a most glorious action, and attract the
blessings of the gods, and the praises of men, if he restored all its lustre
and solemnity to this feast, in making the procession go by land under the
convoy of his troops, to defend it against the attacks of the enemy.  For
either Agis would suffer it to pass quietly, notwithstanding the numerous
troops he had at Decelia, which would considerably lessen the reputation of
that king, and be a blot in his glory; or, if he should choose to attack it,
and oppose the march, he should then have the satisfaction to fight a sacred
battle; a battle grateful to the gods, for the greatest and most venerable of
all their mysteries, in the sight of his country and citizens, who would be
witnesses of his valor and regard for religion.  It is very likely, that by
this public and ostentatious act of piety, which struck the people's view in
so sensible a manner, and was so extremely to his taste, the principal design
of Alcibiades was to efface entirely from their minds the suspicions of
impiety, to which the mutilation of statues, and profanation of mysteries, had
given birth.

     Having taken the resolution, he gave notice to the Eumolpides and Ceryces
to hold themselves in readiness, posted sentinels upon the hills, sent out
runners at the break of day, and taking with him the priests, the initiated,
and the probationers, with those who initiated them, he covered them with his
army, and disposed the whole pomp with wonderful order and profound silence.
"Never was show," says Plutarch, "more august, nor more worthy, the majesty of
the gods, than this warlike procession and religious expedition; in which even
those who envied the glory of Alcibiades were obliged to own, that he was no
less happy in discharging the functions of a hi-priest than those of a
general.  No enemy dared to appear to disturb that pompous march, and
Alcibiades re-conducted the sacred troops to Athens with entire safety. This
success gave him new courage, and raised the valor and boldness of his army to
such a degree, that they looked upon themselves as invincible while he
commanded them."

     He acquired the affection of the poor and the lower sort of people to
such a degree, that they most ardently desired to have him for their king.
Many of them openly declared themselves to that effect; and there were some
who addressed themselves to him, and exhorted him to set himself above envy,
and not to trouble himself about laws, degrees or suffrages; to put down those
wordy impertinents that disturbed the state with their vain harangues, to make
himself master of affairs, and to govern with entire authority, without
fearing accusers.  For him, what his thoughts of the tyranny and his designs
were, are unknown; but the most powerful citizens, apprehending the breaking
out of a fire, of which they already saw the sparks, pressed him to depart
without delay; granting whatever he demanded, and giving him for colleagues
the generals most agreeable to him.  He set sail accordingly with one hundred
ships, and steered for the island of Andros, which had revolted.  His high
reputation and the good fortune which had attended him in all his enterprises
caused the citizens to expect nothing from him but what was great and
extraordinary.